This is the latest, and perhaps most direct, escalation in China's crackdown on the scrap trade since its initial ban of 24 select categories in July 2017. In the months since, the country's new 0.5% contamination standard for all materials, and ban on mixed paper and plastics, has roiled recycling markets around the world. Multiple U.S. states continue to feel the effects and the industry's largest companies have begun talking about ways to change their business models as a result.

In "A Beijing Recycler's Life", a short documentary by Chen Liwen, Ma Dianjin and his wife which have been recyclers for 14 years explain how they live on Beijing's trash. They work every single day from 7 AM to 11 PM. The only break they have is during Chinese New Year when they take 10 days off.

Director Wang Jiuliang, whose previous documentary film "Beijing Besieged by Waste" deals with trash pickers in the Chinese capital, tackles the plastics recycling industry in China, giving a look into the lives of those who do the hard and dirty work of sorting imported plastics by hand.

Chinadialogue interviews two sociologists who have documented the hidden lives of waste pickers in recycling communities on the outskirts of Beijing. These sociologists wrote "Living with Waste: Economies, Communities and Spaces of Waste Collectors in China," a book which is available in Chinese.

Every day, parents and children hike a 300m-tall mountain of rubbish and hunt for plastic bottles, metal cans and other goods, which they then sell to recyclers, earning about US$8 (S$10) per family each day. In India, the one and a half million waste-pickers reside near the bottom of the social and economic ladder.